Chapter 44
Dino and Mary Ann Bacchetti got out of a cab on Sixty-sixth Street. Mary Ann had spent the morning having her hair cut by Frederic Fekkai at Bergdorf’s and having virtually every other part of her body attended to. She was wearing a newly purchased Chanel suit and matching black alligator shoes and handbag from Ferragamo. Dino was wearing a three-piece gray flannel suit from Ralph Lauren, a Turnbull & Asser shirt, and a polka-dot bow tie. A cream-colored silk square peeked from his breast pocket. His shoes were from Ferragamo, too, but they were only black calf. His hair had been cut at Bergdorf’s men’s store by a Fekkai disciple.
“I like the suit,” Mary Ann said to Dino. “You should get some more like it.”
“Stone made me buy it; the other stuff, too. I’m giving it all to him after this meeting. Listen, let me do the talking, will you?”
“What’s the matter, you think I can’t talk?”
“Stone tells me these people like to hear mostly from the men, and he knows about this stuff.”
“Stone can go fuck himself,” Mary Ann said pleasantly.
As they approached the building the doorman placed himself between them and the front door. “May I help you, sir?” he asked Dino, only slightly officiously.
“Thank you, I have an appointment with Mr. Whitfield; my name is Bacchetti.”
The doorman opened the door and allowed them into the lobby, then stepped inside and announced them to a man at a desk. “Mr. Bacchetti for Mr. Whitfield,” he said to the man, then backed out into the street. The man at the desk murmured something into a telephone, then hung up. “Mr. Whitfield is expecting you,” he said. “Charles will take you up in the elevator.” He indicated a uniformed man standing beside the lift. “Mr. Bacchetti for Mr. Whitfield.”
Dino couldn’t remember the last time he’d ridden in an elevator with an operator. The car was equipped for self-service but had an operator anyway; he wondered how much the guy got paid. The elevator stopped, and they emerged into a small foyer. The elevator operator locked the car, stepped out, and rapped on the double front doors. A maid opened the door. “Mr. and Mrs. Bacchetti for Mr. Whitfield,” he said to her.
The woman admitted them. “They’re in the library,” the woman said in an English accent. “Please come this way.”
“I’ll come any way I want to,” Dino muttered under his breath, earning a sharp glance from his wife.
The maid led them into a paneled room where a sixtyish man in a pinstriped suit stood, his back to a merry little fire. A woman in an expensive-looking wool dress sat in a chair beside him.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bacchetti,” the maid said, then left.
“Ah, the Bacchettis,” the man said, approaching them. “I am Charles Greenleaf Whitfield, and this is my wife, Eleanor.” He offered his hand.
“I’m Dino Bacchetti,” Dino said in a voice and accent he could muster when it suited him, “and this is my wife, Mary Ann; good to meet you.” They both shook hands with Whitfield and his wife.
“Won’t you come and sit by the fire?” Whitfield asked, showing them to a sofa facing a pair of chairs, in one of which Eleanor Whitfield was seated. “May I get you a sherry?”
“Thank you,” Dino said. “Mary Ann?”
“Thank you, yes,” Mary Ann said.
Dino was surprised that Brooklyn seemed to have left her voice, as well.
When everyone had a sherry and was seated, Whitfield picked up a file on the table next to his chair. “Is it nice outside? I haven’t been out today.”
“A beautiful day,” Dino replied, crossing his legs and sipping his sherry.
That was it for small talk. “Now, Mr. Bacchetti, Mrs. Bacchetti, I hope you will forgive us for the formality of this meeting, but as you know, the board of a cooperative building has a responsibility to meet and interview prospective purchasers of apartments in the building to try and render some judgment of the suitability of applicants both as purchasers and as neighbors.”
“Of course,” Dino said.
“I am the president of the building, and, as such, my board members have asked m
e to represent them. There are one or two questions with regard to your answers on the application; perhaps I could ask you to expand on them just a bit.”
“Of course,” Dino said.
“You understand that it is the policy of the board not to allow the apartment to be used as collateral for a mortgage or other loan, which means, of course, that the price of purchase must be paid in cash.”
“I understand,” Dino replied.